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Kids can get a little rambunctious in the days leading up to Christmas. While I am not coaching right now, I am the substitute Sunday ‘Awesome School’ teacher at my church. Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday so that meant I got kids the day before Christmas – thank you Captain Obvious. The teacher was smart and took Christmas Eve off. I thought nothing of it until Christmas Eve happened.

All week I thought of the lesson of what to do. Even though there is the occasional time when there isn’t any kids, I wanted to be prepared. I had a lesson all mapped out. If that lesson failed, I had a back up lesson. If that messed up, I had a thousand other ideas. I thought that I played out every scenario in my head. I forgot one factor though: it is kids the day before Christmas Eve.

So Sunday comes and I have four kids. The routine is for the kids to sit down and do introductions. This was key today as their was one kid who I didn’t know. Well one kid sat down, but the other three didn’t. Care to take a guess who listened? Now here is where my training with kids kicked in: a lot of people would have panicked. I could have yelled at the kids, taken them back to their parents, or even found a punishment inside the classroom. Thats not how I work. Instead I did what anyone who works with kids needs to do: embrace the situation. I’ll be honest I didn’t really have it plotted out in my numerous scenarios that the kids wouldn’t sit but I should have. I was prepared what to do if they didn’t sit still but not for it to be full blown mayhem with them running around before I could even close the door and say ‘hello.’ Well, with the one kid listening to me, it allowed us to get acquainted.

So I have three kids running around and one listening. I moved on to one of the scenarios played out in my head. It sucks but it is what it is. That works for ten minutes. After that, full mayhem ensues. I am out of scenarios I am prepared for. This sounds bad but at this point, I embrace that I am essentially a babysitter and not a teacher now. Let’s be real, this is the worst case reality of any teacher so it’s no surprise that I didn’t think of this. The kids burn themselves out. They try to play games but their short attention spans don’t allow for any game to develop beyond the 45 second mark.

So bottom line: kids will be kids; especially on Christmas Eve. If you have

The best:The Mummy ride – my favorite ride from when I last visited 6 years ago. Still is. The closest thing that the place has to a roller coaster and it’s in the dark. Takes you forwards and then back. I had a minor heart attack because I thought we didn’t stop soon enough to go backward – we were fine, I just hadn’t been on it in a few years.Harry Potter & The Forbidden Journey ride – this was the first thing that I did and it ruined everything else. You didn’t need 3d glasses, more action packed than any other ride, and they did a great job making the area where you wait look exactly like the movies. I almost thought the line was the ride. I also was ready to kill my buddy because it turned my friends into an annoying fanboy who wouldn’t stop taking pictures.Waterworld show – I dragged my friend to this and I am glad that I did. A hidden gem with amazing actors, great stunts, and tons of audience interaction.Tram Ride/Tour – was originally going to break this up into its own parts but almost all of it was amazing, minus the VIP tour bus blocking us from seeing something cool. The Fast & the Furious, and simulated earthquake in an underground train station were amazing. For the Furious part, if I didn’t know any better I would have thought that Vin Diesel and The Rock were doing a stage play in front of me.

The good:
Simpsons ride: would probably be lumped with the best but it displaced my all time favorite ride in Back to the Future.

The worst:
Butterbeer – its cream soda topped with whipped cream.
Advertised wait times – this worked both ways. My friend and I hypothesized that it was the time the person at the front of the line waited. This was while we were in a tram line that advertised 20 minutes and was closer to an hour – thank you drunk girl from Montana for keeping us entertained but you got boring after 5 minutes. I will say that one ride advertised a 10 minute wait and it was shorter than that. In fact we walked straight up and the coaster was moving faster than people in line. It was nice to not have to sit in my buddy’s lap for the Transformers ride.
Too much reliance on 3d technology – while King Kong was awesome, I liked the older version that didn’t need glasses. Perhaps if I didn’t have to hear the drunk girl complaining about not getting 3d glasses for a half hour then I would hate it less but I truly have never been a fan of 3d. There shouldn’t be a need for 3d glasses on the tram ride when you use it for 1/10 of the ride.The Transformers ride was so poorly focused that it gave me a bout of motion sickness a third of the way through. Also the bots or whatever you call them have way too many details that 3d ruins them.
Park hours – they closed way too early.

For those that don’t know, I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My PTSD is not from being in the military but from normal citizen’s actions; both male and female. I do not want to get into what happened to me. I will however get into why I am bringing this up and why Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is relevant.

Recently a bunch of people have been coming out against people with big names because of past transgressions. Most are in regards to sexual abuse that took place several years ago. These people are getting a lot of flack for coming out now instead of when it happened. I have many opinions on that but I am using this entry to show why the abuse is relevant in the survivors eyes even though it took place years ago. I hope to somehow get you to comprehend a little about why it matters and why the people coming out are not crazy.

Everyone copes with abuse in different ways. One almost universal way of coping is internalizing it and dealing with it later. People also deal with it later for a variety of reasons. People try to forget it but it is still there. In the case of people coming right now, there is no doubt in my mind that people forgot about what happened until they heard something similar in the media that triggered a reaction. This happens to me numerous times. I can be listening to someone talking and a random side comment would trigger a memory, just because they said something that reminded me of the abuser. When this happens, it triggers memories and events that I didn’t think of for years. In one case I had a memory that was almost 25 years old unlocked, I am 32. So just because an event happened ages ago does not mean that it did not happen.

The great thing about all these people coming out is that for once the survivor of abuse feels like it is a little safer to come out. While the stigma is clearly still there, the blow is someone lessened – even though in my eyes it is not by much.

It is easy to be quick to criticize the people coming out now. I understand it. I almost criticized some of these people myself until I critically analyzed it. That is why I want to share this with you even though I keep my PTSD close to my vest. I hope that I gave you a glimpse into what these people went and are going through. While some are handling their abuse in a destructive way, please be respectful to them. We can’t judge what is real and what isn’t. We are not ones to say that the abuse does not happen. Yes it is a two way street and in a lot of times the alleged abuser is probably a good person, people do make mistakes. Some mistakes need to be paid for and we are going through a time where we are rewriting many wrongs. It will take a while to undo all of the cultural damage but we must work through it. We will be a better society for it.

This following was published in my church newsletter. If my congregation wasn’t only 80 people, I probably would have never wrote it.Joan asked me to write a little blurb on my job search. Asking me to do a little usually consists of me giving everything, so apologize in advance. I figured that I would write this because I can think of several other members of this church who are going through similar feelings on their job search.I will be turning 32 this year. At 25, I saw my life going nowhere and committed to going to college full time. I liked being an aide and working with kids but found it was too hard to be a male with the ages I wanted to work with – ask me about it sometime, I will rattle off statistics that might surprise you. It took me almost 5 years to graduate with a degree in Communication studies. I figured it was nice and vague plus it ended up being an awesome major with classes I was passionate about like social justice.After I graduated I enjoyed my life a little. After about six months I seriously started searching for jobs. Originally I started going for jobs I wanted desperately. I applied to a bunch of government offices because those were my dream jobs. I was still real with my expectations. I applied to a bunch of government jobs that had openings for recent graduates so I was willing to work from the bottom up. Thanks to being on disability I was hooked up with an amazing employment office. They told me (to do a) rigorous job assessment program and I learned that my personality suited government jobs perfectly and I wasn’t suited for manual labor and sales jobs. So for a second, I felt like I was on the right track.After a full year had passed I started aiming at anything. I found that the jobs that were opened either did not suit my skills, like sales, or were companies hiring for a reason; those with high employee turnover. This led me to taking an interview for what was clearly a pyramid scheme – there is another story to ask me about one day.During this time, I realized I was not alone. Many others arestruggling.People don’t realize that looking for a job is a full time job. Here is a sample of what my average day is like:8 am – wake up because I want to pretend I am an active member of society9 am to 2 pm, sometimes later – consistently applying for jobs and looking3 pm to 6 pm – doing online surveys that pay me next to nothingafter dinner – readI never play games. I can’t rationalize playing video games when I could be doing other productive things. I didn’t even have Facebook on my phone until recently and that is only because I help do the church’s Facebook. All day feels like one major hustle and it will be until I find a job.

I simplified it a bit. I do surveys and search for jobs at the same time. I get tired of one thing and move on to another then switch back to it. For the purpose of the article, I broke it up into easily relatable chunks. I may or may not check ESPN and others sports news sites once every half hour. I have to be honest I am worn out from the surveys and need a break. Applying for jobs where my resume probably doesn’t even get looked at is pretty monotonous and tiring as well.
If you came across this and can help, my LinkedIn profile can be found at linkedin.com/in/danieladubay/

I had a really weird first week of the 2017 fantasy football season. I am in a league that has been pretty much the same people for the past 3 years. All local people and friends or friends of friends and new teams every year. I won the first year so clearly none of us are experts. For some reason it is a 3 WR league.

A lot of weirdness happens in fantasy football but this week felt like most bizarre week that I have ever had. I will go over the events in order.

Tampa Bay, my defense, has a sudden bye because of the hurricane. The free agent teams are a joke but I grab the Colts figuring at the very least they will win their game. LMFAO, Jared Goff played like Joe Montana for the first time in his life.

Odell Beckham Jr, my first pick is out.

2 of my starting WRs go down with season ending injuries during their games. Goodbye Allen Robinson and Kevin White in a league where every half decent WR is taken.

Thanks in part to my opponent losing David Johnson, Yahoo gives me an 80% chance to win my matchup at the end of the night despite Tyler Eifert, Colts defense, and the injuries.

I need Adrian Peterson and Brandon McManus to put up 10 points to win. I basically have this game locked, right?

Peterson has 18 rush yards in his game. No problem, McManus just needs 3 field goals that aren’t extra points in his game. That doesn’t happen either.

Right now I am in this weird post college graduation limbo. Finding a full-time job in this climate with a company that has any values feels impossible. I don’t have a paying job but I am busy with things that aren’t paying. This week, there were two kind of related situations where I realized the absurdity of our current economy. I have always been active in the community whether it is coaching, PTA, or church.
Until this past week, I didn’t realize that being an active member of board meetings was a true skill. Sure it is something great to put on a resume but let’s face it: things that look great on a resume and skills are two separate facets. These are meetings where we make decisions that affect a ton of people and can have a bigger impact than some realize, oh crap it sounds like I am being groomed for politics, ahhhhhh. Anyway information and decisions made in them is sensitive. Since we are making big decisions things that are said don’t need to be heard by everyone. For example I proposed the idea of becoming a Sunday school teacher at my church. This had to be talked about in a meeting. I figured it was something that would be discussed but if it was decided that they thought that I wouldn’t be a good fit, then I would never hear about it. If something negative is said about me in the meeting, I don’t want to know nor do I think it is important for me to know as it is the decision that matters. I don’t need to hear that …. said this about me and they think I will turn the kids into devil worshippers. All I need to hear is ‘we didn’t see a fit’ and we all shake hands afterward. It is civil, we both keep our respect for each other; and there is some if you are dealing with people with integrity like most people in these meetings have. So for the record, this did not happen. In fact, I will probably be a Sunday school teacher. My point is that I never realized that keeping the confidentially of these meetings was a skill. I think of it as ‘corporate tact.’ It wasn’t until someone’s actions showed me that it was a skill.
This leads me to my other point. There is a handful of people I know who are struggling in the world like I am. We sit in on these meetings, next to people making amazing money at their jobs and get paid for things that we have skills for. Community leadership brings various demographics together. Here is the thing though, lower tax brackets doesn’t translate to being the idiot of the meeting. There is one person I know who is working his butt off at two minimum wage jobs but is basically doing the work of a high-powered executive at these meetings. He, along with several other people who I know, are at times the smartest people in the room at these meetings. This actually gives me confidence that I can succeed in the world. I just need the door to not be slammed in my face or my resume to be looked at. These resume builders are making me stronger and giving me confidence in my skills; skills that I didn’t even know I had.
Here is the crazy thing, I love what I do. I will do this when I have a full-time job because doing good in community is the most important thing to me.